The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Saturday, April 30, 2011

The sights and sounds emanating from Syria indicate that the sides, both the regime and its opponents, have reached a stage in which they feel desperate and will not waive their demands, regardless of the price to be paid. From the public’s perspective, the threshold of demands rises as more time passes and casualties grow: if, when the protests began, they called for repeal of the emergency law, they now see the regime as the enemy of the people and insist upon its downfall. Knocking down statues of Assad – father and son –and tearing down their portraits has become routine, and the masses do this with obvious enthusiasm.

The turbulent bloodbath is becoming more complex: the one hundred murdered today are the one hundred funerals of tomorrow, each a protest in which more will be killed, and similarly thereafter, with emotions becoming increasingly heated as regime violence intensifies.

Fear is dissipating on both sides: the people are no longer afraid to mass in the streets and – in contrast – the authorities are no longer reluctant to concentrate massive fire at the crowds. The breaches in the ranks of the regime are becoming more widespread: The Mufti of Syria resigned three weeks ago; members of Parliament quit during a live broadcast on Al-Jazeeralast week; the editor of a major newspaper was sacked after sharply criticizing the government; senior officers are shedding their uniforms in a sign of protest; soldiers are deserting the army and taking their personal weapons with them; prominent public personalities are openly expressing disapproval of the conduct of the security forces, which received a greenlight to open fire at demonstrators.

As the circle of Bashar’s supporters becomes smaller, their siege mentality and cruelty will increase. They no longer fight for the regime but to keep their heads from rolling. The blood of the protesters will be washed away by that of the regime’s fighters, if they are caught in uniform. The loyalists are prepared to fight to the last Syrian.

The city of Hama is the symbol of the 1982 uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was crushed with much cruelty and the murder of thousands. The dispatch of troops to Dar’a at the beginning of last week points to the possibility that it will serve as the symbol of the 2011uprising. The question is how many more thousands have to be killed in Syria before the world begins to take action as in Libya.

To the government of Israel I would propose parachuting medicines into Syrian cities using unmanned drones. This would be an excellent investment for the future.

Possible Scenarios for Syria’s Future

A. Preservation of the Syrian State Under New Leadership

It is possible that at some point a responsible adult high in the ranks of the Syrian army or the head of an intelligence agency will understand that it is worth throwing the public a bone in order to salvage as much as possible. With the assistance of several armed bodyguards, he will arrestBashar Assad along with his brother Maher and other relatives, primarily from the Makhlouf family, that of the president’s mother. He will conduct a hasty trial and treat them as the public expects them to be treated, in order to attain calm. He will announce constitutional changes and economic reforms and schedule elections for several months later. This scenario issomewhat similar to the current situation in Egypt.

If this responsible adult is an ’Alawi, it is safe to assume that the public will not accept him and will continue its protests. If he is a Sunni, there is a greater chance that some people will wait and see how things develop, especially if he will not be identified with economic corruption and thebloodshed that took place during the crackdown on the protests. The important point in this scenario is that the government machinery survives and continues to function and administer the state; in the coming years, this machinery will undergo change and those who were part of the previous regime will gradually be replaced.

If the pace of reforms does not satisfy the masses, they will return to the streets, oppose the authorities and prevent the ruler from establishing himself while he pushes the public and its wishes to the sidelines. The masses sense their power and will not cede their accomplishments,particularly after sacrificing so many on the altar of freedom.

B. Regime Split

The government will split if and when conflicts erupt within the security forces – the army and the intelligence – with some switching their loyalty from the regime to the street, similar to what transpired in Libya and Yemen. If things develop as they did in Libya, an all out, no-holds-barredwar will commence between those in the army who support the rebels and those who support the regime. If developments follow the Yemenite pattern, the army will be paralyzed by its divided loyalties. A potential Syrian parallel could divide the state into two parts reflecting the geographicdivision of the forces which develop, with a possible war between the two sides similar to that in Libya. This scenario will create an unstable situation since each side will continue to be ruled by a military elite and Syria’s fundamental problems will remain unsolved and will, indeed, worsen.The regime will be supported by Iran and the western world will back the rebels.

C. The Collapse of the State

If the ’Alawis lose the battle for the Syrian street and their control of the government, the worst will transpire for them; frenzied Sunni masses will descend on ’Alawi neighborhoods in Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, armed with knives, ready to detach ’Alawi heads from their necks. AllMuslims in Syria know that ’Alawis are infidels and idol-worshippers and, as such, are condemned to death. The ’Alawis will flee to the Ansayriyyah Mountains, their ancestral homeland in western Syria, and, entrenched there, will defend their lives.

The Kurds in the North will declare independence as did their brethren in Iraq; the Druze in Jabal al-Druze in the South will restore the autonomy stolen from them by France in 1925; the Bedouins in the East will establish a state with Dir a-Zur as its capital; the Aleppans will exploit the opportunity to throw off the yoke of the hated Damascenes. Thus, six states will rise from the ruins of Syria, each much more homogeneous than the former united Syria and, therefore, more legitimate in the eyes of most of its inhabitants. This is similar to what transpired in Yugoslavia.

These six states will not require an outside enemy in the form of Israel, whose permanent role had been to unite the people under the president's banner; there is, therefore, a greater possibility than ever before that peace will reign between the state that is founded on the other side of the Golan (the State of Damascus?) and Israel. As these states are unlikely tomaintain warm relations with Iran, the world can bless this development, which will break the axis of evil and further isolate Iran. Hezbollah in Lebanon will also feel less secure without the permanent Syrian backing it has enjoyed to date.

Heating Up the Border with Israel

Until the 1970s, whenever the Syrian regime faced internal problems, it heated up the border with Israel in order to create the opportunity to tell the enraged masses: “The Zionist Huns are poised to destroy us and, you, therefore, must put aside all conflicts and unite under the aegis of the savior, the president”. This practice has been neglected for thirty-seven years and it is hard to believe that it will be resumed because the public no longer “buys” the story.

As long as the regime has military and police forces at its disposal, it will not attempt to drag Israel into battle because Israel is liable to strike hard, in particular disabling its helicopters and preventing it from operating against the masses. Nevertheless, in the event of a total collapse of the governmental apparatus, someone in the Syrian regime might think along the lines of “Let me die with the Israelis” and launch nasty weapons in Israel's direction. In such a case, it will be difficult for Israel to respond effectively for there will be no one to deter and punish. Israel must be prepared for such a scenario, and especially keep its eyes and ears open in light of the weapons of mass destruction in Syrian hands.

In his April 27, 2011 column in the UAE-based Gulf News, titled "Outdoing Israel in Brutality," and sub-headed "Zionist crimes pale in comparison with the manner in which some Arab regimes have cracked down on their own people for merely seeking change," Dr. Faisal Al-Qassem favorably compares Israel's treatment of the Palestinians with the Arab regimes' treatment of their own people, noting that "Israelis are very much less brutal."

Al-Qassem, whom Gulf News describes only as "a Syrian journalist," is a Syrian Druze who hosts the "Opposite Direction" program on Al-Jazeera TV. On April 25, 2011, ennaharonline.com reported, citing various websites and Arab newspapers, that Al-Qassem had resigned from Al-Jazeera due to its biased coverage of the Arab revolutions.[1] Other websites, such as the Lebanese Al-Akhbar, reported that he had returned to Al-Jazeera but would be hosting a different program, not "Opposite Direction."[2]

The following is his column, in the original English.

Can the Arab Media Still "Satirize Israeli Barbarism... After Witnessing What Arab Dictators Have Done To Their Own People?"

"The Arab media has, for over half a century or so, strongly condemned Zionist crimes against the Palestinians and other Arab peoples. It has in actual fact provided a hell of a lot of satire on Zionist brutality, which is fair enough.

"But is the Arab media still able to satirize Israeli barbarism with the same vigor after witnessing what Arab dictators have done to their own people? Isn't it a bit silly to bombard the Israelis with criticism and keep quiet about savagery against unarmed demonstrators?

"An Israeli journalist remarked cynically about two decades ago that the Arab media can easily see a dust particle in the eyes of Israel, but can hardly see a log in the eyes of Arab regimes. In other words, the journalist wanted to expose Arab media hypocrisy, where it ignores the massacres committed by some Arab rulers.

"Funnily enough, comparing the number of Arab people killed during the wars between Israel and Arab countries with the number of Arabs killed locally, one will notice that Arab dictatorships have killed more people.

"I wonder what the aforementioned Israeli journalist would say after seeing what some Arab despots are doing to protesters. I am sure he might put pressure on the Israeli authorities to be harsher with the Palestinian and Lebanese in the future. Sadly enough, some Arab armies and security services have proved to be much more brutal than the Israeli army.

"When Israel killed about 1,400 Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, the Arab media raised its voice, and thankfully drew world attention to Israeli atrocities. But when we compare the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza with the number of Arabs being killed these days by Arab dictators, we will be horribly surprised."

"An Arab Satirist Once Commented That An Arab Dictator Would Not Accept the Number Of Palestinians Killed In Gaza Even As An Appetizer!"

"Shocking Facts

"In fact, the Sudanese regime killed hundreds of thousands of its own people in Darfur. The so-called Janjaweed gangs in Sudan annihilated the people of Darfur like flies simply because the latter clamored for their basic rights. An Arab satirist once commented that an Arab dictator would not accept the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza even as an appetizer!

"Recently, there were reports that deposed Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali ordered his air force to bombard a civilian area in the Al-Qasrain region because the people there demonstrated against his regime. Thankfully, the army refused to carry out his order.

"The ongoing Arab intifadas have shown that some Arab rulers can beat the Israelis at their own game. An Arab website recently carried an opinion poll asking readers: 'Who will be a killioneer?' Sure enough, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya won the day. Not only did he kill a lot of his own people but also almost flattened many Libyan cities. It brought to mind Western cities flattened by Hitler's forces during the Second World War.

"Take Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. WikiLeaks has revealed that his 'chairmanship' gave the green light to American aircraft to bombard civilian areas to quell a local revolt. Add to this, of course, his brutal handling of the Yemeni revolution.

"Other Arab despots are reported to have asked their security forces to aim their guns at protesters' heads. Have you ever seen an Israeli officer torturing a Palestinian civilian to death in the street for everybody to see? Definitely not. [But] many of us have seen that in some Arab towns lately.

"Under Siege

"It is true that Israel is forcing an embargo on Gaza, but I do not think that the Israelis are preventing the Palestinians from getting their daily bread, whereas the security services in some Arab countries stopped cars carrying food from entering certain areas. Nor are the Israelis cutting off electricity, telephone and other communication services from houses, hospitals and schools.

"It has been reported that the security services stopped nurses and doctors from treating the injured during certain Arab demonstrations as a punishment for rising against the ruling regime. The thugs contracted by the police to help quell protests went even further. They shot at ambulances.

"Israelis Are Very Much Less Brutal... Israel Can Always Claim It Is Facing An Enemy, Whereas Arab Dictators Are Facing Their Own People"

"Unlike in some Arab countries, Arabs living inside Israel can organize sit-ins very comfortably. And when the Israeli police intervene, they never beat demonstrators to death. And if we compare how Israel treats [Israeli Islamist movement leader] Sheikh Raed Salah with the way some Arab dictators treat their opponents, we will be horribly surprised, as the Israelis are very much less brutal.

"It is true that Israel used internationally prohibited ammunition during Operation Cast Lead, but some Arab despots used some chemical stuff to disperse demonstrators.

[Editor's note: "Regarding the IDF's use of white phosphorus during the operation, which drew international condemnations and accusations that Israel was perpetrating war crimes, the probe into the use of the weaponry discovered that in all cases it was used in accordance of international law."

The above citation is taken from an article published in the Jerusalem Post, entitled "IDF Cast Lead probe: White phosphorus was used legally", by Yaakov Katz. The full article can be viewed here.]

"Israel can always claim it is facing an enemy, whereas Arab dictators are facing their own people. Let us end with a succinct verse from the late poet Omar Abu Risha: 'No one can blame a wolf when it preys on a sheep if the shepherd himself is the enemy of the cattle.'"

In this new Middle East, Egypt also seems to be moving closer to Iran, raising serious fears in most Gulf countries. For now, it looks as if the new Middle East, which is taking shape in front of everyone's eyes, belongs to Iran and its pawns.

Hamas has finally won recognition as a legitimate authority and player in the Palestinian arena.

Hamas has every reason to celebrate: the unity deal with Fatah is an admission of the failure of US-led efforts to isolate and undermine the Islamist movement.

Thanks to Egypt's new rulers, Hamas is finally being rewarded for its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

The Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas will allow the Islamist movement to become part of a new interim unity government that would prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hamas, according to the accord, would also be permitted to maintain its security and civilian control over 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, the agreement does not set conditions for Hamas's participation in the Palestinian government. Hamas is not even required to accept the Oslo Accords, recognize Israel's right to exist or renounce violence, as previously demanded by the Americans and Europeans.

The same mistake that was made in the 2006 parliamentary election is now being repeated once again.

Then, Hamas was allowed to take part in the election unconditionally. The result was that Hamas won the vote, much to the surprise and dismay of the Americans and Europeans.

Ten years earlier, in 1996, Hamas boycotted the same parliamentary vote because, its leaders argued, it was being held under the umbrella of the Oslo Accords, which the Islamist movement does not recognize.

The international community did finally set conditions for dealing with Hamas, but only the day after it had won the election and when it was already too late.

Now Hamas leaders have every right to smile all the way to a unity government with Fatah.

Hamas is not being asked to make any concessions in return for joining a new Palestinian government. As Hamas's Mahmoud Zahar declared, the new government would not conduct peace talks with Israel or recognize the Jewish state.

The release of hundreds of Hamas detainees from Fatah-controlled jails in the West Bank will only boost the Islamist movement's standing in that area. Hamas's chances of scoring another victory in the new elections, which are supposed to take place in a year, now appear to be much higher.

In the eyes of many Palestinians, the unity deal means that Fatah has moved closer to Hamas and not vice versa. Under pressure from Egypt's new rulers, who have displayed more sympathy toward Hamas than the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak, Fatah is being forced to accept Hamas as an equal partner in governing the Palestinians.

In an interview with the German news paper Der Spiegel, the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, described Israel's pre-Six-Day War borders as "Auschwitz" lines.

Eban, a lifetime dove, vowed:

"With Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians ... hold[ing] our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history." [emphasis added]

In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, after three Arab armies converged on Israel's nightmarish borders, even the United Nations was forced to recognize that Israel's pre-1967 Six-Day War borders invited repeated aggression. Thus, UN Resolution 242 - which formed the conceptual foundation for a peace settlement - declares that all states in the region should be guaranteed "safe and secure borders."

President Lyndon B. Johnson, in an address on September 10, 1968, declared:

"We [The United States] are not the ones to say where other nations should draw the lines between them that will assure each the greatest security."

"It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967, will not bring peace.There must be secure and there must be recognized borders." [emphasis added]

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s response to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority’s peace deal with Hamas would be funny if it weren’t tragic. Immediately after the news broke of the deal Netanyahu announced, “The PA must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both.”

Netanyahu’s statement is funny because it is completely absurd. The PA has chosen.

The PA made the choice in 2000 when it rejected Israel’s offer of peace and Palestinian statehood and joined forces with Hamas to wage a terror war against Israel.

The PA made the choice in 2005 again when it responded to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza with a tenfold increase in the number of rockets and missiles it fired on Israeli civilian targets in the Negev.

The Palestinians made the choice in 2006, when they elected Hamas to rule over them.

They made the choice in March 2007 when Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal.

The PA made the choice in 2008 when Abbas rejected then-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer of statehood and peace.

The PA made the choice in 2010 when it refused to reinstate peace negotiations with Netanyahu; began peace negotiations with Hamas; and escalated its plan to establish an independent state without peace with Israel.

Now the PA has again made the choice by signing the newest peace deal with Hamas.

IN A real sense, Netanyahu’s call for the PA to choose is the political equivalent of a man telling his wife she must choose between him and her lover, after she has left home, shacked up and had five children with her new man.

It is a pathetic joke.

But worse than a pathetic joke, it is a national tragedy. It is a tragedy that after more than a decade of the PA choosing war with Israel and peace with Hamas, Israel’s leaders are still incapable of accepting reality and walking away. It is a tragedy that Israel’s leaders cannot find the courage to say the joke of the peace process is really a deadly serious war process whose end is Israel’s destruction, and that Israel is done with playing along.

There are many reasons that Netanyahu is incapable of stating the truth and ending the 18- year policy nightmare in which Israel is an active partner in its own demise. One of the main reasons is that like his predecessors, Netanyahu has come to believe the myth that Israel’s international standing is totally dependent on its being perceived as trying to make peace with the Palestinians.

According to this myth – which has been the central pillar of Israel’s foreign policy and domestic politics since Yitzhak Rabin first accepted the PLO as a legitimate actor in 1993 – it doesn’t matter how obvious it is that the Palestinians are uninterested in peaceful coexistence with Israel.

It doesn’t matter how openly they wage their war to destroy Israel. Irrespective of the nakedness of Palestinian bad faith, seven successive governments have adopted the view that the only thing that stands between Israel and international pariah status is its leaders’ ability to persuade the so-called international community that Israel is serious about appeasing the Palestinians.

For the past several months, this profoundly neurotic perception of Israel’s options has fed our leaders’ hysterical response to the Palestinians’ plan to unilaterally declare independence.

The Palestinian plan itself discredits the idea that they are interested in anything other than destroying Israel. The plan is to get the UN to recognize a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. The PA will first attempt to get the Security Council to endorse an independent “Palestine.” If the Obama administration vetoes the move, then the PA will ask the General Assembly to take action. Given the makeup of the General Assembly, it is all but certain that the Palestinians will get their resolution.

THE QUESTION is, does this matter? Everyone from Defense Minister Ehud Barak to hard-left, post-Zionist retreads like Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg says it does. They tell us that if this passes, Israel will face international opprobrium if its citizens or military personnel so much as breathe in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem without Palestinian permission.

These prophets of doom warn that Israel has but one hope for saving itself from diplomatic death: Netanyahu must stand before the world and pledge to give Israel’s heartland and capital to the Palestinians.

And according to helpful Obama administration officials, everything revolves around Netanyahu’s ability to convince the EU-3 – British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – that he is serious about appeasing the Palestinians. If he doesn’t offer up Israel’s crown jewels in his speech before the US Congress next month, administration officials warn that the EU powers will go with the Palestinians.

And if they go with the Palestinians, well, things could get ugly for Israel.

Happily, these warnings are completely ridiculous. UN General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight. Even if every General Assembly member except Israel votes in favor of a resolution recognizing “Palestine,” all the Palestinians will have achieved is another non-binding resolution, with no force of law, asserting the same thing that thousands of UN resolutions already assert. Namely, it will claim falsely that Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza are Palestinian territory to which Israel has no right. Israel will be free to ignore this resolution, just as it has been free to ignore its predecessors.

The threat of international isolation is also wildly exaggerated. Today, Israel is more diplomatically isolated than it has been at any time in its 63-year history. With the Obama administration treating the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem as a greater affront to the cause of world peace than the wholesale massacre of hundreds of Iranian and Syrian protesters by regime goons, Israel has never faced a more hostile international climate. And yet, despite its frosty reception from the White House to Whitehall, life in Israel has never been better.

According to the latest data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel’s economy grew 7.8 percent in the last quarter of 2010.

International trade is rising steeply. In the first quarter of 2011, exports rose 27.3%. They grew 19.9% in the final quarter of last year. Imports rose 34.7% between January and March, and 38.9% in the last quarter of 2010.

The Israel-bashing EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. And even as Turkey embraced Hamas and Iran as allies, its trade with Israel reached an all time high last year.

These trade data expose a truth that the doom and gloomers are unwilling to notice: For the vast majority of Israelis the threat of international isolation is empty.

The same people telling us to commit suicide now lest we face the firing squad in September would also have us believe that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is the single greatest threat to the economy. But that lie was put paid this month with the demise of the Australian town of Marrickville’s BDS-inspired boycott.

Last December, the anti-Israel coalition running the town council voted to institute a trade, sports and academic boycott against Israel. Two weeks ago the council was forced to cancel its decision after it learned that it would cost $3.4 million to institute it. Cheaper Israeli products and services would have to be replaced with more expensive non-Israeli ones.

Both Israel’s booming foreign trade and the swift demise of the Marrickville boycott movement demonstrate that the specter of international isolation in the event that Israel extricates itself from the Palestinian peace process charade is nothing more than a bluff. The notion that Israel will be worse off it Netanyahu admits that Abbas has again chosen war against the Jews over peace with us has no credibility.

SO WHAT is preventing Netanyahu and his colleagues in the government from acknowledging this happy truth? Two factors are at play here. The first is our inability to understand power politics. Our leaders believe that the likes of Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel are serious when they tell us that Israel needs to prove it is serious about peace in order to enable them to vote against a Palestinian statehood resolution at the UN. But they are not serious. Nothing that Israel does will have any impact on their votes.

When the Europeans forge their policies towards Israel they are moved by one thing only: the US.

Since 1967, the Europeans have consistently been more pro-Palestinian than the US. Now, with the Obama administration demonstrating unprecedented hostility towards Israel, there is no way that the Europeans will suddenly shift to Israel’s side. So when European leaders tell Israelis that we need to convince them we are serious about peace, they aren’t being serious. They are looking for an excuse to be even more hostile. If Israel offers the store to Abbas, then the likes of Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy will not only recognize “Palestine” at the UN, (because after all, they cannot be expected to be more pro-Israel than the Israeli government that just surrendered), they will recognize Hamas. Because that’s the next step.

It would seem that Israel’s leaders should have gotten wise to this game years ago. And the fact that they haven’t can be blamed on the second factor keeping their sanity in check: the Israeli Left. The only group of Israelis directly impacted by the BDS movement is the Israeli Left. Its members – from university lecturers to anti-Zionist has-been politicians, artists, actors and hack writers – are the only members of Israeli society who have a personal stake in a decision by their leftist counterparts in the US or Europe or Australia or any other pretty vacation/sabbatical spots to boycott Israelis.

And because the movement threatens them, they have taken it upon themselves to scare the rest of us into taking this ridiculous charade seriously. So it was that last week a group of washed-up radicals gathered in Tel Aviv outside the hall where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israeli independence, and declared the independence of “Palestine.” They knew their followers in the media would make a big deal of their agitprop and use it as another means of demoralizing the public into believing we can do nothing but embrace our enemies’ cause against our country.

The time has come for the vast majority of Israelis who aren’t interested in the Nobel Prize for Literature or a sabbatical at Berkeley or the University of Trondheim to call a spade a spade. The BDS haters have no leverage. A degree from Bar-Ilan is more valuable than a degree from Oxford. And no matter how much these people hate Israel, they will continue to buy our technologies and contract our researchers, because Cambridge is no longer capable of producing the same quality of scholarship as the Technion.

And it is well past time for our leaders to stop playing this fool’s game. We don’t need anyone’s favors. Abbas has made his choice.

At Yale the other week, Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the most aggressive and vicious supporters of Palestinian terrorism, conducted a stunt to dramatize their anti-Israel agenda. Members of the SJP put “Eviction Notices” under the dorm room doors of Yale students, which warned them that their rooms were going to be “demolished in three days” for no reason. According to a report of the action in the Yale Daily News, the Eviction Notices were designed “to raise awareness about the plight of Palestinians whose homes are being demolished by the Israeli government.” In a sane world such a claim would have zero credibility. Why would any government, let alone one as humane and democratic as the government of Israel, go around randomly demolishing people’s homes? What agenda would be served by that?

In fact the homes that Israel has demolished belong to terrorists who blow up Pizza parlors and buses and Passover services, hoping to kill as many innocent Jews as possible. It is all part of a 60-year unrelenting war Arabs and Muslims have waged against the existence of a non-Arab, non-Muslim state in the Middle East. This is a fact overlooked not only by terrorist support groups like Students for Justice in Palestine but by the editors of the Yale Daily News. Naturally, Yale students ignorant of this 60-year history and bombarded by Palestinian lies spread by left-wing faculty and student organizations to the effect that Israel is “occupying” a mythical entity called “Palestine,” Palestinians are oppressed by Israelis (rather than the Palestinian Authority and Hamas), Israel is an “apartheid state” and so forth – are unable to distinguish reality from fiction.

“I was really confused at first,” a Yale sophomore named Helen McCreary told the Yale Daily News, “but I think I understand why [Students for Justice in Palestine] did it. None of us have had our house randomly destroyed by the government.”

The SJP Eviction Notices explained to the credulous that they “were not meant to be an attack on Israel or Israelis, but rather on the actions of the Israeli state.” But as everyone knows, Israel is a democracy and its government reflects the sentiments and will of its people – including a million Muslim Arabs who are Israeli citizens with more rights than the citizens of Gaza or the West Bank under Palestinian rule. In short, this a distinction without a difference: the attack on Israel is an attack on Israelis and Jews. By the same token, 100% of the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza vote for terrorist organizations – either Fatah or Hamas. But if one were to draw the conclusion that Palestinians as a people support terrorism – that opinion would be banned from the pages of the Yale Daily News and every other college newspaper as giving “offense” to an ethnic group — although there is no ethnic group “Palestinian.”

And how did Yale’s Jewish organizations respond to this malicious attack from a Hamas-supporting, Israel-hating campus group? According to the Daily News reporter, “a member of the Yale Hillel board and the co-president of Yale Friends of Israel criticized the fliers for being ‘counterproductive’ and disrespectful,” and also “hyperbolic” – as though the Israelis were only demolishing the doors on Palestinian houses for sport and not their entire dwellings.

The rationale for responding in such generalities which did not come close to identifying the outrage that had been committed was that Hillel did not want to even think of upsetting the Students for Justice in Palestine who, in fact, would like to see Israel destroyed and the Jews pushed into the sea. Too harsh? That is precisely what the SJP slogan, chanted on campuses across the country, promises: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” One glance at a map of the Middle East will show that the eastern border of Israel is the Jordan River and the western border is the Mediterranean sea. In other words, “Free Palestine from the river to the sea” means for the campus Nazis who chant it: the obliteration of Israel. As it happens, this is the explicit and formal goal of their favorite Palestinian party, Hamas, which has enshrined it in its charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it.”

On a brighter note, the Yale Daily News did publish an intelligent response to the eviction protest by two Jewish undergraduates who pointed out in an op-ed piece aptly titled “Evicting the Truth,” that the demolition of homes by Israel was not a policy of random sadism but an attempt to discourage terrorists from killing Jews — at random. Even these two defenders of Israel, however, couldn’t bring themselves to confront the reality of the SJP attack, which they described as “silly.” They concluded their argument on this note: “Yale has a long tradition of serious conversation and intelligent dialogue. The time has come for organizations like SJP to contribute meaningfully. Let’s have a real conversation; we’ll even bring the matzah.” Yes, by all means bring the matzah to sup with people who want to obliterate you.

For Yale Hillel’s self-abasing Jews, even sugarcoating your enemy’s venom (“counter-productive,” “hyperbolic,” “silly”) is an insufficient gesture of submission. You must also distance yourself from Jews who stand up to their enemies: “’We try to act constructively and respectfully on these issues, not divisively and hyperbolically,’” said Josh Kalla ’13, Israel Chair on the Hillel Board. Kalla noted that when the David Horowitz Center, a pro-settlement organization, published an incendiary full-page advertisement in the News, the [Joseph] Slifka Center [for Jewish Life at Yale] also published a full-page advertisement, criticizing the Horowitz Center’s approach to the debate.”

We never saw the Slifka Center advertisement that appeared in the Yale Daily News because it was available only in the print version of the paper. When my office called the Slifka Center and requested a copy of the ad from Steven Sitrin, its executive director, Sitrin barked into the phone, “We don’t have it,” and then, in as hostile a manner as he could muster, hung up the receiver.

As it happens, the director of Hillel for the Philadelphia region, Howard Alpert, has characterized the contents of our incendiary advertisement, which we called “The Palestinian Wall of Lies,” as “a factual reply to common anti-Israel propaganda.” For the Slifka Center and Yale Hillel a factual defense of the Jews in the Middle East is “incendiary” because it upsets the Israel-haters. But a campaign to portray the only existing Jewish state as an evil force that systematically demolishes the homes of innocents is not. It’s just “hyperbolic.”

In closing, it should be noted that the matzah overture, with which the two undergraduates concluded their op-ed, was not incidental. To conduct their malevolent attack on the Jews, Students for Justice in Palestine had chosen the precise week when Jews all over the world celebrate Passover, which is religious commemoration of their flight to freedom from slavery in Egypt.

Major reforms are needed to ensure that terrorists don't get visas to enter the United States, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee agree.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) say a new Government Accountability Office report shows that the Visa Security Program (VSP) is plagued by serious problems ranging from staffing shortages to inter-agency bickering over the degree of association with a terrorist that would make a visa applicant ineligible to enter the United States. The VSP, which is run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, places ICE agents in U.S. consular posts to review visa applications.

In an April 21 statement, both lawmakers said the GAO findings spotlight the need for major reforms.

"I am particularly upset by GAO's conclusion that the departments of Homeland Security and State cannot agree on grounds to deny a visa to an applicant. Any association with terrorism should be enough to stop a visa applicant from coming to our country," Lieberman said. "This GAO report paints a very disappointing and troubling picture of the Visa Security Program, which is such an important part of our strategy to keep terrorists from entering the United States."

Effective operation of the VSP "is a critical aspect of the security system that is intended to keep terrorists from entering our country. That is why the problems uncovered by GAO are so troubling," Collins said. "VSP must implement standard operating procedures to help DHS and State Department agents resolve questions about who should - and who shouldn't - receive a visa to come to our country."

The senators have not commented about the Department of Homeland Security's decision this week to drop the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) which required registration of citizens entering the United States from high-risk countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. A DHS spokesman said new technology rendered the program costly and outdated.

Lieberman and Collins requested the study following the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it flew from Amsterdam to Detroit. The would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is a Nigerian man who had obtained a visa to enter the United States. In August 2009, Abdulmutallab used the valid U.S. visa to enter Yemen, where he trained with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Abdulmutallab was able to retain the visa despite his presence on a U.S. terrorism watch list. He made his way to Amsterdam, where he used the U.S. visa to board the Northwest flight.

No one was injured when the explosives sewn into Abdulmutallab's underwear failed to detonate.

Among the GAO findings:

· Efforts to keep foreign terrorists from obtaining U.S. visas are being undermined by interagency conflict between ICE and State Department officials. "Some posts we visited had experienced tension between VSP agents and other law enforcement agency officials at post," the report said. "For example, at one post, the VSP agents and DS [State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security agents] disagreed about whether the VSP agent had authority and responsibility to conduct investigations locally. Consular officials at another post wanted a DS officer to serve as a liaison between VSP and the consular section."

Consular officials reported that tensions between VSP and DS officials at one site sometimes prevented the consular section from receiving information in a timely manner. At another post, the consular chief said that "consular officials and VSP agents rarely interacted with each other and that visa applications sometimes 'disappeared' in the VSP unit. Consular officials at this post stated they did not understand the VSP's mission."

· The VSP has "not consistently located" units at numerous diplomatic posts identified as being at "highest risk" of processing visas from terrorists. Also, of the 20 posts defined as highest risk by the State Department and ICE, just nine have a VSP unit.

ICE officials claim they have addressed the problem using the "security advisory opinion" process (SAO), which is initiated when a consular officer requests one or a visa applicant meets certain predefined criteria. While this process can mitigate some of the risk at locations with a VSP unit, "it does not ensure the breadth of coverage provided by VSP agents through the routine screening and vetting of applicants who are not subjected to the SAO process," the report said. "ICE's expansion plan does not identify ways in which to address this lack of VSP coverage at the remaining high-risk posts it identified."

· Staffing shortages and the use of temporary duty agents "have caused difficulties at some posts." In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for example, consular and VSP officials said the reliance on temporary duty agents affected continuity of operations. One consular official said there was a "severe lack of coverage" for consular operations in Riyadh because the VSP unit was not fully staffed.

In Jeddah and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, lack of VSP staff created delays and forced officers to re-adjudicate cases. ICE officials said the staff shortages in Saudi Arabia are exacerbated by the agency's failure to provide incentives for employees to work at hardship posts.

· ICE lacks a language training program and has not established it as a requirement for VSP agents. This is due in part to budgetary constraints: Because some VSP agents serve just one- or two-year tours, agency officials are reluctant to invest in language training. One agent who was trained at the start of his deployment told GAO that language skills were "critical" because he could conduct interviews and interact with local law enforcement officials.

· ICE "remains unable to accurately measure the performance of the Visa Security Program." ICE has failed to produce reports "identifying the progress made toward achieving VSP objectives" which include identifying "not yet known threats to homeland security" and being able to "identify and counteract threats before they reach the United States."

The value of a VSP tracking system has been "significantly limited" by "inconsistent use." ICE officials acknowledged that at many diplomatic posts the problem resulted from frequent turnover of VSP agents.Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2807/visa-security-program-plagued-by-discord-confusion

Friday, April 29, 2011

How should Israel deal with the Palestinian Authority’s intention to declare, with United Nations General Assembly support, a state in all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza this coming September?

Three well-known figures – Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, ex-Ambassador to Egypt Tzvi Maz’el, and Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan - answered this question for the weekly B’Sheva magazine, and Hevron Jewish Community David Wilder spoke up as well.

Their answers:

Ex-Ambassador to Egypt, Sweden and Romania Tzvi Maz’el: We must deal with this on the diplomatic and informational levels… It appears that the Prime Minister is traveling to France and Great Britain to discuss this topic. In my opinion, he must make it clear to the Americans, Europeans, and others that convening the UN General Assembly [for this purpose] will strike a blow at all the agreements we have signed with the [PA], which determined that all problems and issues that arise between us and them… must be solved in direct talks between the sides. When a foreign body such as the UN decides on the establishment of a Palestinian state, it essentially voids the Oslo Agreements of their content. In such a case, Israel will have to act unilaterally to protect its interests, without coordinating with the PA as we do today…

In addition, all the negotiations between Israel and the PA are based on UN resolutions 242 and 338… and on which were based the Oslo Agreements. The moment that the UN recognizes a Palestinian state, it means that 242 and 338 and all agreements based on them are void. This must be stated, in legal and political terms, as clearly as possible.

In addition, the General Assembly can only recommend, but cannot make binding decisions…

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon: Let us not scare ourselves with ungrounded theories. The Palestinian move for unilateral recognition is a threat with nothing behind it, and will not serve the Palestinians. A decision by the General Assembly will not change anything on the ground, and certainly not without Israeli cooperation…

We are working on many fronts to present the Israeli position, and many countries are realizing that this unilateral move is not relevant. The PA’s actions and intentions prove again that they are not interested in real peace with Israel– for if they were, they would come to the negotiating table and talk with us…

Those in our country who say that September will be very fateful for Israel, are often the same ones who systematically call on Israel to retreat from its position. Israel has dealt successfully in the past with even bigger challenges than this one, and has flowered and blossomed afterwards. We are in the midst of a ‘political intifada’ on the part of the PA, and we must continue to watch out for our security and interests…

At a time when we see many changes in regional regimes, it is important for the world’s democracies not to allow the establishment of another terrorist state in the Middle East.

Danny Dayan, Chairman of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria: The first and primary thing that the government of Israel must do, even without taking the Palestinians’ intentions into account, is to declare clearly our claim to ownership and sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. While the Palestinians claim this area with lies and distortions, we must present the People of Israel’s unshakeable claim to its homeland and its intention to actualize this right. But if the Arabs talks about national rights and Israel demands only security, the game is lost from the beginning.

Of late, the government of Israel has been broadcasting signs of panic in light of the PA’s intentions. Expressions such as a ‘diplomatic tsunami’ that await us [as Defense Minister Ehud Barak said – ed.], simply increase our enemies’ motivation… causing self-fulfilling prophecies. This vicious cycle must be stopped immediately.

How? By making a 180-degree turn in policy: No more promises for concessions and gestures if they drop their unilateral approach, but rather a clear and direct threat that their unilateral steps will be met by some unilateral steps of our own. But not merely declaratory unilateral steps, like the one they are planning, but some very practical ones – such as our annexation, with all that that entails, of all or parts of Judea and Samaria… We have many tools at our disposal… and we must be less restrained in using them.”

David Wilder, Spokesman for the Hevron Jewish Community (written after the announcement of the Hamas-Fatah agreement): …I believe the agreement is a reason to break out the wine, set up a band, and celebrate. [Because] this time [Shimon Peres] has hit the nail on the head [when he said on Thursday], ‘The agreement will prevent creation of a Palestinian state.’ …

[Netanyahu’s] Bar Ilan 2 speech, to be recited before a full house of Senators and Congressmen in Washington in a few weeks, [had been] just about finished, [including] concession after concession, abandonment of more land to our enemies, relinquishment of additional security precautions, a 'Palestinian state' in temporary borders, perhaps even with a taste of Jerusalem for dessert. It was all set. And now - what bombshell can he initiate? Not a one. At least, certainly not in the direction he planned…

The conflict between Hamas and Fatah [never had] anything to do with ideology. Both agree that the state of Israel is an insufferable thorn in the collective throats of the Arabs that must be plucked out of existence at the first opportunity. Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] certainly hasn't changed his life's philosophy, which he expressed while planning the 1974 Ma'alot massacre and funding the 1972 Olympic terror killings in Germany… Bibi already announced his acceptance of a Palestinian state. But what can he do now? Every rocket now shot into Israel, at Sderot, Ashkelon or Tel Aviv, has not one signature on it, but rather two: Ismail Haniyeh [Hamas] and Abu Mazen [Fatah]. Gilad Shalit is now a captive of Hamas-Fatah. Every attempted terror attack initiated from Gaza is rubber-stamped: Fatah-Hamas…

Just as G-d hardened Pharaoh's heart, so too, today, He is throwing dust into the eyes of our enemies, blinding them, dulling their senses, and leading them down a dead-end road - leading, not to Israel's destruction, rather to their own obliteration. This does not mean, under any circumstances, that we will have an easy time of it. Far from it. Dead end roads aren't necessarily short, and they can be quite bumpy. But the chances of another Arab state on our eastern border, created with Israel's blessings, have hit the lowest level they've been at in years.

It won't be easy, but we will prevent creation of a Palestinian state. G-d is watching over us. G-d is protecting us, even from ourselves. Thank G-d!

One of the assumed benefits of the proposed two-state solution is that the creation of a Palestinian state will finally make the Palestinians fully accountable for their actions. Thus, any acts of aggression from the new entity against Israel will be considered an attack on Israel from a sovereign country rather than from a terrorist organization. Moreover, it is this distinction, so we are told, that will not only allow Israel to forcefully respond to any acts of Palestinian aggression but also do so with the full support and understanding of the international community.

Although such line of reasoning sounds very enticing and has even managed to win over some former skeptics, we shouldn’t buy it. In fact, a quick survey of the last 20 years seems to indicate otherwise.

At the height of the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq launched scud missiles at Israel in an attempt to draw it into the conflict. This was a classic case of a sovereign Arab country attacking Israel with powerfully destructive missiles, aimed at some of its most populous regions. Nonetheless, despite the numerous missiles that landed in Israel, due to various geopolitical considerations and behind-the-door pressure Jerusalem did not respond.

Roughly 10 years later, Israel speedily removed all of its troops from southern Lebanon. At the time we were promised that Israeli positions would be taken over by the South Lebanese Army (SLA) in order to prevent Hezbollah forces from stationing themselves within spitball range of Israel’s northern border. In addition, we were assured by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak that should Hezbollah ever commit an act of aggression against Israel our response would be very painful.

Like usual, Israel fulfilled its side of the agreement while the Arabs failed to uphold their part. As a result, rather than having the SLA parked across the border we received Hezbollah. This change of events afforded Hezbollah the opportunity to closely watch our troop movements, something they quickly cashed in on. After a mere few months of up-close surveillance, Hezbollah men dashed across the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.

Israeli restraint

However, despite our hard-earned justification to retaliate to such an unprovoked act of aggression and even the prime minister's own guarantee to respond with might in such situation, in the end we did very little. Thus, the promises meant nothing and unfortunately the kidnapped soldiers were killed.

Five years after the tragic kidnappings in Lebanon, Israel removed all Jewish presence from Gaza. At the time we were told that the removal of Israeli troops from the Strip would shift the burden of accountability to the Palestinian Authority, thereby forcing it to rein in the various terrorist organizations. This, like every other promised benefit, turned out to be false as attacks against Israel only increased.

While Israel did eventually reenter Gaza at the end of 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead, this happened only after thousands of missiles were fired at Jewish communities close to the Gaza border. Moreover, the promised admiration of the world we supposedly were to acquire following our unilateral pullout quickly melted away, as many in the international community hypocritically condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza.

Although there were times when Israel responded forcefully to cross-border attacks, such as in the Second Lebanon War, the growing trend through the years has been for a limited Israeli response or total restraint. Moreover, rather than winning the world's approval based upon our polite and considerate behavior, this trend has been accompanied by the growth of an increasingly hostile anti-Israel environment worldwide.

This being the case, why should we believe that things will be different next time? It is far more plausible to assume that acts of aggression emanating from a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria will be met with the usual limited Israeli response. Moreover, even in the rare instance where Israel responds more forcefully, it is safe to assume that the world will quickly condemn the Jewish state regardless of the circumstances.

In light of the above, how on earth can we use an unproven assumption as the basis for severely weakening our national security, something which is sure to happen if a Palestinian state is created in Judea and Samaria? Indeed, it's absolute madness.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Muslim Students Association is a national organization with chapters on hundreds of U.S. campuses. It has a privileged position on these campuses such that no student paper would print the statement that follows in this blog. It would be regarded as “offensive to an ethnic and religious group.” What is truly offensive are the subterfuges under which the MSA operates, lying about its core mission — which is to advance the Islamic jihad against the Jews and Christians of the Middle East, and ultimately against the United States. Unfortunately the lies of the MSA (like its sister organizations CAIR and the Muslim American Society) are successful in snookering the willing accomplices of the political left and the unwitting accomplices of the inattentive middle to support and protect them.

“The purpose of the Muslim Student Association of the University of California, San Diego is to provide an environment for the development and networking of Muslims on campus while fostering a sense of community between Muslims and non-Muslims through education.”

This is an organization that sponsors Israel Apartheid weeks, sponsors Israel-hating speakers, advances the false and genocidal claim that that Israel exists on land stolen from a mythical “Palestine” that never existed and promotes the propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood, creator of Hamas and spiritual guide of al Qaeda. Its “education” consists of informing the gullible that Islam means “peace” (actually it means “submission”) and that “terrorism is, in fact, a term that spans the entire world and manifests itself in various forms,” and is, in fact, a term applicable to “sanctions” (e.g., the sanctions against Iran to prevent its dictators from developing nuclear weapons. The MSA site directs the inquisitive who want to understand Islam (and Islam’s relation to terrorism) to a site called WhyIslam.org — a site that happens to be sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America, which like the MSA itself, is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Unfortunately this transparent double talk is enough to snooker gullible university administrators, faculty and students into regarding the jihad-supporting MSA chapters as religious and cultural organizations, while providing them with special privileges and protections. This allows them to conduct their war against the Jews and Crusaders in the heart of America’s educational institutions. The main Jewish organization on campus, Hillel, joined forces with this arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to attack the “Palestinian Wall of Lies” which our students put up at Brown, Florida State and the University of North Carolina, to refute the lies of the anti-Israel, anti-American left and the Nazis of Hamas — a sister organization of the MSA.

Only one nation on this planet is regarded as virtually having no civilians: Israel. Back in the 1970s already, international law expert Yoram Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and incitement against Israelis constitutes genocide.

David Ben-Gurion’s famous statement “Oom, Shmoom,” meaning “The UN – who cares?” summed up Israel’s indifference to world opinion in the past. It has been a failed policy as Israel’s enemies are now using all global means at their disposal to undermine the Jewish State.

In a few days, Israel will mark Holocaust Commemoration Day. There is no better time to support the historical battle just initiated by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Centre for Violence and Genocide Prevention and backed by former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The campaign takes aim at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic religious leaders and the media for “inciting to commit genocide” and fomenting lethal anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the 1930s. The Jews are demonized using accusations of conspiracy and thirst for blood or power.

The Jews are described as sub-humans by expressions like “pig,” “cancer,” “filth”, “microbes” or “vermin”; hate material such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or school maps without Israel are being disseminated; the Jewish right to self-determination is denied, by claiming that Israel’s existence is “racist” and akin to “apartheid”; comparisons are drawn between Israeli policy and the Nazis; world Jewry is being held responsible, collectively for the actions of Israel.

The legal basis for this anti-genocide campaign is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified on January 12, 1951 by 138 states including Iran. At this time, Tehran calls for Israel’s destruction and dehumanization, denies the Holocaust denial and incites to commit mass murder.

An upcoming example of incitement is the UN’s “Durban III” conference in September 2011. Israel will be declared an “apartheid” and “criminal” state, and the Jews will be slammed as inveterate racists.

The first Durban conference was held in South Africa in 2001, where well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the Children attached their names to the racist parade. NGOs distributed leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Three months later the second Intifada broke out, with 1,500 Jewish civilians subsequently slaughtered in terror attacks.

Iran is not unique in inciting a new Jewish bloodbath. Another example of incitement is the fatwa issued by Muslim Brotherhood’s guru, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army.

Below are just few names of pregnant Israeli women slaughtered by terror groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Yael Shorek was nine-months pregnant; Gadi and Tzippi Shemesh were killed immediately after having a scan of their unborn twins; Avital Wolanski was six-months pregnant; Rivka Holzberg was five-months pregnant; Tali Hatuel was eight-months pregnant, and Tehiya Bloomberg was five-months pregnant.

In 2003 the World Union for Progressive Judaism asked UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the UN Human Rights Commission to condemn the Hamas’ charter as a violation of the Convention against Genocide. A year later, three brave Arab intellectuals, Jawad Hashim, Shakir al-Nabulsi and Lakhdar Lafif sent a request to the UN Security Council, urging the establishment of an international tribunal for the prosecution of Islamist incitement against Jews, Muslim “apostates” and Christians.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that it was words, not machinery, that produced Auschwitz. Now the call for Israel’s destruction echoes through schools and mosques, textbooks and newspapers, TV series and pseudo “documentaries.” And not only in the Arab world. Thanks to satellite channels, Hezbollah’s al-Manar and Hamas’ al-Aqsa TV stations can beam their incitement and hatred for the Jews into European living rooms, radicalizing Muslim immigrants.

That’s why Israel and its Western allies must launch a campaign to charge organizations and leaders who commit incitement, enlisting the help of attorneys, journalists and writers to testify on the endless litanies of paranoia and genocidal perversion. Such people risk their career and life daily by denouncing the blood libels, and Israel should support them.

Western parliaments would politically validate the charges and Europe must be urged to cut its business dealing with Tehran if the mullahs continue to incite against the Jews. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former minister of justice and attorney general, suggested that Ahmadinejad and other incitement leaders should be placed on a “watch list” by Western countries preventing their entrance as “inadmissible persons” (Qaradawi is already banned in the UK and US.)

Brave groups, such as UN Watch, can support the battle in legal forums. They could launch a counter campaign against UNESCO’s racist policy on Judaism’s holy sites (Rachel’s tomb and the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron were just designed as “mosques.”) In 2009, a similar campaign prevented Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian minister who said that he “would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian libraries” from becoming UNESCO’s head.

Moreover, human rights groups should be bombarded with the untold Israeli statistics: The 17,000 people wounded in terror attacks; the 1,600 civilians killed; the 12,000 rockets fired on southern Israeli cities; the fact that some 40% of wounded Israelis will remain with permanent disabilities.

There are wounded heroes who just want to tell their story. They should be invited to speak in the courts because they are the survivors of current-day genocide.

In European faculties, there are still brave academicians who can denounce Islamist-supporting speakers among them. An example of incitement is the book “The Matza of Zion” written by former Syrian defense minister Mustafa Tlas, in which he claims that the Jewish matzot was made from Arab blood. Still, the West maintains shameful partnerships with Arab libraries holding this book. Western democracies must be urged to rescind these cultural deals.

This is an historical battle that Israel can win with the support of Westerners who still care about the fate of their civilization. To the Spanish fascists who were saying “Viva la muerte!”, the Republicans replied: “No pasarán.” We should offer the same response to contemporary death cultists. As history has taught us, while it begins with Jews, it does not end with Jews.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/28/fighting-jewish-genocide/

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism.

On Wednesday, Hamas and Fatah reached a reconciliation agreement that includes the formation of a unity government that will last until general elections are held within one year. The groups claimed that all areas of disagreement had been settled, including with security arrangements. It is being hailed as an achievement, but it ends the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and is bound to ultimately fail.

The Arab Spring motivated Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to pressure their governments to come together. In mid-March, thousands of Palestinians protested in favor of reconciliation in both Palestinian Territories. In Gaza, dozens of protesters went further and demanded the release of political prisoners and greater freedoms and were forcibly dispersed and threatened with arrest.

Each side tried to deflect the blame onto the other. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for presidential and legislative elections in September on the condition that Gaza was included. Hamas announced a minor shakeup of its government and presented an offer for a unity government that was rejected. Now, both sides have caved to domestic opinion and have agreed to create a joint transitional government.

The Israeli government is understandably concerned. This agreement means that the Palestinian Authority will no longer act as an enemy of Hamas. The terrorist group will have increased influence over the West Bank and its security services, ending previous undisclosed cooperation between Fatah and Israel. Hamas’ war against Israel will never give up its war against Israel and Fatah will be forced to join in or abandon the unity government. A spokesman for Hamas says that the agreement stipulates that prisoners without a criminal background will be released. It is unclear what this means, but it should be assumed that those involved in acts of terrorism will soon be freed.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both.” He’s right. Last year, a Hamas official unequivocally stated that any agreement to have an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders would only be a first phase towards the ultimate destruction of Israel. For Hamas, the “peace process” is a means to an end.

Fatah isn’t the best peace partner, either. President Abbas has said that an independent Palestinian state would not have a single Jew living it, which makes peace impossible. Last year, Abbas called the family of Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich, to offer his condolences after his death. The Fatah Revolutionary Council also celebrated him as a hero. However, Fatah is definitely preferred over Hamas by Israel.

A document released by WikiLeaks dated June 13, 2007 shows that the Israeli Security Agency said it has “established a very good working relationship” with the Palestinian Authority’s security services. The agency’s chief, Yuval Diskin, is reported as saying that they “share with ISA almost all the intelligence that it collects” and that Fatah leaders even asked Israel to attack Hamas in Gaza. “This is a new development. We have never seen this before. They are desperate,” he said.

As recently as last month, Abbas accused Hamas of being an Iranian and Syrian proxy. The Palestinian Authority condemned Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2009 but blamed the “massacre” of Palestinians on Hamas. It said that Hamas was wrong to not renew the ceasefire and that it was done on orders from Tehran. The Israelis appear to have given the Palestinian Authority advance notice of the operation as they sought to have Fatah or Egypt govern Gaza after it was finished but failed to persuade either. Hamas has repeatedly accused Fatah of sharing intelligence on its operations with Israel.

Following the Turkish flotilla incident, the Palestinian Authority forbade Hamas from staging protests in the West Bank. In September, the Palestinian Authority arrested 150 members of Hamas following shootings of Israeli civilians, saying the attacks “can’t be regarded as an act of resistance” and were designed to sabotage peace talks. This enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mentality that benefited Israel will no longer exist as Hamas and Fatah begin holding hands.

Since the West Bank and the Gaza Strip began being governed separately, 4,000 members of Hamas have been arrested in the West Bank and thousands of Fatah supporters have been imprisoned in Gaza. Each side tortured each other’s supporters, though Fatah said it stopped doing so in October 2010 and jailed, fired or demoted 43 prison officers for abuses. In August 2010, there were reports about the increasing amount of abuse each side was exercising toward the other. This past will not be forgotten and it is difficult to see a future where the two permanently settle their differences.

The antagonism will reignite as the election campaigns heat up, though domestic pressure may prevent a war or complete break. At this point, it is quite possible that Hamas will lose the next elections. The terrorist group has seen its popularity decline in Gaza and is actually more well-liked in the West Bank, where the citizens have not been exposed to Hamas governance. About 56 percent of Gazans have a negative view of Hamas, with 28 having a positive view. In the West Bank, 53 percent give the terrorist group a negative rating but its support is larger than in Gaza with 40 percent.

Remarkably, 46 percent of Gazans blame Hamas and Israel equally for their troubles. President Abbas has a 63 percent approval rating in Gaza and Prime Minister Fayyad is at 65 percent. When it comes to Iran, 49 percent of people in the Gaza Strip have a negative attitude as do 58 percent of those in the West Bank. Tying Hamas to Iran looks to be a smart political strategy for Fatah. This, of course, assumes elections will even be held and if they are, that they will be free and both sides will respect the results.

The reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah is bad news for Israel but it is unlikely to last. Hamas will never give up its goal of creating a Sharia-based state that will destroy Israel. Fatah will have to participate or become its enemy again. Hamas will not be a better peace partner for Fatah than it has been for Israel.

The UNRWA workers in Palestinian schools have announced their "adamant opposition" to teaching Palestinian children about "the Holocaust of the Jews." This announcement by the UNRWA Workers' Union was in response to UNRWA's decision to include Holocaust education in its curriculum in the topic of "human rights." According to the UNRWA Workers Union, teaching Palestinian children about the Holocaust will "confuse the thinking" of Palestinian children.

Headline: "The [UNRWA Workers'] Union emphasized its opposition to teaching the Holocaust of the Jews as part of the curriculum in the [UNRWA] Agency's schools..."

"The [UNRWA] Workers' Union emphasized its adamant opposition to teaching the Holocaust of the Jews within the educational curriculum of UNRWA schools, as part of the topic of human rights. The union said, 'We emphasize our adamant opposition to confusing the thinking of our students' by means of Holocaust studies in the human rights study curriculum, and emphasize study of the history of Palestine and the acts of massacre which have been carried out against Palestinians, the most recent of which was the war against Gaza.'

As in other European countries (here and here), the politically correct guardians of Finnish multiculturalism have tried to silence public discussion about the escalating problem of Muslim immigration.

In March 2009, for example, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician and well-known political commentator, was taken to court on charges of "incitement against an ethnic group" and "breach of the sanctity of religion" for writing that Islam is a religion of paedophilia. He was referring to the Islamic prophet Mohammed, who is believed to have married a six year old girl and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

A Helsinki court later dropped the charges of blasphemy but ordered Halla-aho to pay a fine of €330 ($450) for disturbing religious worship. The Finnish public prosecutor, incensed at the lower court's dismissal of the blasphemy charges, appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court, where it is now being reviewed.

Halla-Aho, the best-known political blogger in Finland, maintains a blog entitled Scripta, that deals with issues such as "immigration, multiculturalism, tolerance, racism, freedom of speech and political correctness." His blog has between 3,000 and 6,000 readers a day. According to Halla-aho, immigration is a taboo topic in Finland. He has received death threats because of his web columns, which criticize the number of immigrants coming to Finland and argue that Muslims cannot be integrated.

In April 2011, Juha Molari, a Finnish Lutheran pastor, was "defrocked" after he was accused of inciting religious hatred for describing Doku Umarov, the man behind the Moscow metro and airport bombings, as a "terrorist."

Also that month, the Finnish Ministry of Interior launched a new Internet site focused on immigration. The politically correct objective is to "give a boost to factual and serious debate and information on the issue," and "to get away from an 'us and them' position as well as from preaching and guilt attitudes." Of course, the site does not have a discussion forum.

Also, Finland's political map has been redrawn in the aftermath of parliamentary elections on April 17, when the nationalist True Finns Party won more votes than the governing party and now stands on the cusp of political power. The surge of the True Finns Party, which campaigned on a platform of opposition to Muslim immigration and further European integration, reflects growing voter disenchantment with multiculturalism and the ruling establishment's fixation with the European Union.

The final vote results show the populist True Finns Party finishing third place with 39 seats in Finland's 200-seat Parliament, just behind the center-right National Coalition Party with 43 seats and the center-left Social Democrats with 42 seats. The governing Center Party lost 16 seats, ending up with 24 seats.

As the largest vote-getter, the National Coalition Party has been given the first chance to form a government, and the party leader Jyrki Katainen, set to be Finland's next prime minister, said "it is our duty to form a majority government." He is now negotiating with the True Finns and the Social Democrats to build a governing coalition.

Support for the True Finns, led by charismatic leader Timo Soini, has nearly quadrupled its share of the vote from 4% to 19% since the last parliamentary elections in 2007. Using a catchy campaign slogan (kansa tietää: "The people know"), the party has harvested popular anger over issues ranging from bailouts of debt-laden European countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal to unemployment and immigration, especially from Muslim countries.

Although Europe's political establishment and the mainstream news media have variously branded the True Finns as "far-right," "racist," "xenophobic," and "fascist" because of the party's opposition to immigration, in reality the party does not fit neatly into any political grouping. The True Finns combine left-wing economic policies (the party defends the welfare state, for example, and favors raising taxes to do so) with conservative social values (Soini is a devout Roman Catholic). The party has been placed on the center-left in the parliamentary seating order.

In any event, both the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats have adopted many of the anti-immigration positions held by the True Finns. For example, the National Coalition Party has called for "realism in asylum policy; resources for integration;" and the Social Democratic Party has set a goal for "controlled immigration." Further, members of all three parties have voiced their concerns about immigration and the threat it poses to Finnish culture and identity.

Immigration is also not the exclusive concern of only one type of Finnish voter. According to a recent survey commissioned by the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper and conducted by Suomen Gallup, Finns of all political persuasions and socio-economic classes are concerned about immigration. The polling data show that nearly 60% of Finns are opposed to immigration. This number is up from 44% in 2009 and 36% in 2007.

Immigrants make up about 4% of the Finnish population, a relatively percentage low by European standards. There are an estimated 60,000 Muslims in Finland, which has a population of just over 5 million. The Muslim population has increased rapidly in recent years, due largely to immigration; and there are now dozens of Islamic communities in the country. As in other European countries, the debate over immigration centers on growing concerns about the failure of Muslim immigrants to integrate into Finland and learn the language.

A case in point is the request by Muslims in Finland for a fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) on how they should live in their newly adopted country. The fatwa was issued by Muhammad Saalih Al-Munajid, a well-known Saudi Arabian expert on Islamic Sharia law, who, in 2008, issued a fatwa to kill Mickey Mouse. He says: "You have to be aware that you are living in a Christian society, a Christian country, whose flag bears the cross! … It should be a priority of Islamic groups and political parties, especially those that are trying to establish an Islamic state, as we said, to preserve the identity of the Muslims who are living there. One of the most important means of preserving their identity is for Muslim men to marry Muslim women and to strive to create an Islamic atmosphere in their social lives. In the Islamic parties and organizations there should be people who direct the Muslims' private matters such as marriage, divorce and social relationships in accordance with the laws of Allah."

This is already happening. According to some reports, Muslim children in Finnish schools often are not allowed to take part in school activities such as singing and dancing, which are considered religious. Often, immigrant children play the race card if a solution to a conflict does not go in their favor or if a teacher rebukes the child.

In December 2010, the Islamic Society of Finland, headquartered in downtown Helsinki, complained that the country's Muslims are running out of places to worship as their numbers grow. Finland's only officially consecrated mosque is located in the town of Järvenpää, some 40 kilometers north of Helsinki.

In March 2011, the Islamic Society of Finland called for the government to provide university-level courses for the country's imams. There are around 40 to 50 imams in Finland, both teaching and conducting religious services at mosques and prayer rooms. Their educational backgrounds vary. "Many have studied in their communities or in their home countries. What is needed is a degree from an institute of higher education for all imams," says Anas Hajjar, an imam with the Islamic Society of Finland.

In recent years, ethnic Finns have been leaving immigrant-heavy neighborhoods to find more suitable housing elsewhere. According to some studies, Finland's largest cities have developed areas where more than one-fifth of the population is of foreign origin. As native Finns move out of areas with significant immigrant populations, they are reducing the size of the population capable of paying taxes, leaving behind only those consuming welfare services, according to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.

Much of the problem revolves around Finland's immigration policy, which is one of the most liberal in Europe. This was highlighted in November 2009, when Egypt Today magazine published a story entitled "Welcome to Finland," which portrayed Finland as a paradise for Muslim immigration.

According to Egypt Today: "Tara Ahmed, a 25-year-old Kurdish woman, came with her husband to Finland seven years ago to work. 'There are a lot of services offered to us here,' she says. 'Plus, during my seven years I haven't had one single harassment, assault or discrimination case in any form.' Like most immigrants, Ahmed and her husband took advantage of the free Finnish language lessons offered by the government, which pays immigrants €8 per day to attend. The government also provides immigrants with a free home, health care for their family and education for their children. In addition, they get a monthly stipend of €367 per adult to cover expenses until they start earning their own living. The government is able to pay for these services due to a progressive tax rate that can exceed fifty percent of a person's income. Even so, officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed that Finland needs immigrants and that, in the long run, they are not a burden on society."

Some Muslim immigrants to Finland have travelled to Pakistan or Somalia to attend Jihadi training camps, according to Vasabladet, a newspaper in Sweden. In February 2010, Helsingin Sanomat reported that the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab was recruiting young Somalis living in Finland to go to war against the Somali government.

In early 2010, the Finnish Security Police (SUPO) asked Parliament for €1.7 million in funding to station officers permanently in Africa and the Middle East to stop possible terrorists who might want to travel to Finland. In August 2010, SUPO said it had successfully prevented terrorist suspects from Africa from entering Finland. In December 2010, Interior Minister Anne Homlund said that training individuals to commit terrorist acts would become a criminal offense.

In January 2011, the City of Helsinki said that it would stop reserving special hours for Muslim women to use the public pool in the suburb of Jakomäki. In the future, the time slot for Muslim women will be open to all women. Previously, the Jakomäki swimming hall blocked off Saturday mornings specifically for Muslim women. The women's session followed a swimming class for Muslim girls.

In December 2010, the Ombudsman for Minorities, Eva Biaudet, issued a statement saying that a ban on Muslim prayer by a gym in the City of Espoo was not a violation of the prohibition on discrimination against ethnic minorities. In August 2010, the exercise center posted a notice requesting clients not to pray in its facilities. A nearby library provided a screened-off section in its rooms during August-September for use by Muslims during the month of Ramadan. But nine Espoo city councillors have demanded that religious practices be kept separate from public services.